FINDING:
The process for drawing legislative district boundaries in Ohio allows the
party with control of reapportionment, be it Republicans or Democrats, to
draw those lines in ways that protect its incumbent officeholders and advance
its own interests.

Prior to the 1960s, many states had not redrawn their state legislative
district boundaries for many years, resulting in rural areas being overrepresented
and urban and suburban areas being underrepresented. A series of Supreme
Court decisions in the 1960s mandated decennial redrawing of state legislative
district boundaries and required that representation in both houses of
the state legislature be based on population.

After these rulings, Ohio established a 99-member State House of Representatives
with two-year terms and a 33-member State Senate with staggered four-year
terms, with both chambers representation based on population. Ohio
also adopted a new mechanism  the Reapportionment Board  to
redraw the boundaries of the state legislative districts after each decennial
census.

The Reapportionment Board is composed of five members: the Governor,
the Secretary of State, the Auditor of State, one legislative Democrat,
and one legislative Republican. Thus, whichever party wins two of the
three statewide offices controls the redistricting process for state legislative
seats.

The redrawing of U. S. House district boundaries is done by an act of
the state legislature subject to the approval of the Governor. If one
party controls the Ohio House, the Ohio Senate, and the governorship,
it can maximize the number of seats drawn so as to favor the dominant
party. When there is split control, the two parties must necessarily limit
their aspirations and arrive at some sort of compromise in congressional
redistricting.

FINDING: Partisan redistricting in Ohio has negative consequences,
including a growing number of uncompetitive legislative elections, overrepresentation
of the dominant party in the legislature, and greater polarization in
state government.

From the outset, the Ohio Reapportionment Board has acted in a very partisan
fashion. Whichever party controls the Board seeks to maximize the number
of seats it can win. It does this by creating a large number of seats
that are reasonably safe for the majority party and a smaller number of
districts extremely safe for the minority party. The process results in
most state legislative districts being solidly held by one party and uncompetitive
in the general election  an outcome that occurs in most states that
employ partisan redistricting methods. The meaningful election is thus
the primary and not the general election.

This process has negative consequences for Ohio and, more broadly, for
American politics. For example, many voters do not have a meaningful choice
in November, the election outcome having been foreordained by partisan
redistricting and by the electoral advantages that incumbent officeholders
possess. In addition, the ultimate distribution of seats in the state
legislature may not reflect the overall popular vote totals in legislative
elections.

For example, in the 2004 Ohio elections, Republican candidates for the
Ohio House received just 50.8 percent of the overall popular vote, but
still won almost 60 percent of the seats. How did this happen? The Republican-controlled
Reapportionment Board in 2001 drew many overwhelmingly Democratic districts
such that the Democrats won these districts with very large margins, thereby
wasting many Democratic votes. Likewise, in 2004 U.S. House
races, Republican candidates received 51.1 percent of the popular vote
but still won two-thirds of the 18 House seats. This was the result of
the Republican legislature having drawn a pro-Republican congressional
redistricting map in 2001, which was approved by the Republican Governor.

When Democrats controlled the redistricting process, they acted in much
the same way. For example, in the 1970 statewide elections, Democrats
won control of the Reapportionment Board and redrew the state legislative
districts the following year. Although the Democrats increased their share
of the Ohio House popular vote by only one percent between 1970 and 1972,
they increased their number of seats in the Ohio House of Representative
from 45 to 59. As computer programs and elections data have become more
sophisticated, control of the redistricting process is even more important.

Another undesirable outcome of the current redistricting process is that
it contributes to legislative polarization at the state and national levels.
When the outcome of the general election is a foregone conclusion, the
important battle is the Republican or Democratic primary. To win the Republican
primary, candidates often move to the right because that is where the
political activists and primary voters tend to be. By the same token,
to win the Democratic primary, candidates typically move to the left.
In a district that is heavily Republican or heavily Democratic, the winner
of the dominant partys primary has no reason to move to the center
in the general election. The consequence is to elect Republicans who are
more conservative than the average rank-and-file Republican, and Democrats
who are more liberal than the average rank-and-file Democrat. It is little
wonder that legislative bodies are so polarized  and that many citizens
feel that the choices offered to them are so inadequate.

FINDING: Because the parties have strong incentives to maintain the
present redistricting system, reform in this area will require a sustained
and long-term public education campaign.

It is very difficult to reform a partisan redistricting process. The party
that currently controls and benefits by the process will typically oppose
reform. Even the party that is currently disadvantaged may be unenthusiastic
about reform, at least when that party believes it has a good chance to
regain control over the redistricting process.

Due to the concerns set forth above, there have been numerous efforts
in the last 25 years to reform the redistricting process in Ohio. All
of these efforts have failed. Typically, though not consistently, the
party that controlled the process saw no need for change, while the other
major party was more likely to support reform. In 1981, a constitutional
amendment was placed on the Ohio ballot to change the method of redistricting
to a more formulaic, mathematical approach that favored compact districts.
This amendment was supported by good government organizations such as
the League of Women Voters as well as by the Ohio Republican Party. It
was opposed by the Democrats and their allies, who at that time controlled
the redistricting process and saw no need to change it. The amendment
was soundly rejected by the voters.

Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s the League and its allies tried to
keep redistricting on the front burner. When Democrats lost control of
the Reapportionment Board in 1990, they became more sympathetic to changing
the system  but unsurprisingly, Republicans had lost their enthusiasm
for change. The Republicans held on to the Reapportionment Board, the
legislature, and the Governors office through the 2000 elections
and thus saw no need to change the system for the post-2000 redistricting.

In 2005, a coalition of individuals and organizations came together under
the rubric of Reform Ohio Now (RON) to promote a package of four constitutional
amendments, one of which dealt with redistricting. The RON redistricting
amendment took a formulaic, mathematical approach, only this time the
number one criterion was competitiveness. Among a set of qualifying plans,
the one that was to be selected was the one that created the greatest
number of competitive districts.

RON included some academics, some good government organizations, some
labor unions, and some Democrats  but very few Republicans. Ultimately,
the Ohio Republican Party and many prominent Republicans opposed the RON
amendments. The Ohio Democratic Party did not endorse the amendments.
Some county Democratic Party organizations endorsed the amendments, and
some Democrats opposed the amendments, including the chairman of the Cuyahoga
County Democratic Party.

The RON amendments were overwhelmingly rejected by the voters. The Republican
opposition was not surprising since the GOP controlled the existing process.
But the tepid Democratic organizational support was somewhat surprising.
One explanation given for the weak Democratic support was the expectation
of many Democrats that they would sweep the 2006 elections and thus control
the post-2010 redistricting process. On this line of thinking, there was
no reason to change the process, when they might be in the position to
do to the Republicans what the GOP had done to them in previous redistricting
plans.

2006 saw another effort to enact redistricting reform, this one led by
Republicans. During the debate over the RON redistricting amendment in
2005, its leading Republican opponents  House Speaker Jon Husted
and Representative Kevin DeWine  acknowledged that the current system
of redistricting was flawed. While arguing that the RON amendment was
not the solution, they pledged to take up the issue of redistricting reform
in 2006, if it were defeated.

Speaker Husted and Representative DeWine kept their word, negotiating
with various reform groups and some Democrats. Their proposal would have
placed Ohio in a national leadership position, since it explicitly included
competition as a criterion in choosing a redistricting plan, while balancing
competitiveness with other criteria such as compactness. When the time
came for a legislative vote to approve an amendment for the ballot, only
one Democrat supported the proposal and it failed. While the reasons for
this result are complex, it appears that Democrats did not trust the Republicans,
did not want the Republicans to get credit for political reform, and 
perhaps most importantly  believed that there was no need to change
a system that might soon benefit them.

Ohio thus still has a partisan system of redistricting in place. The
next redistricting will take place in 2011, after the 2010 census. If
the system is not changed, control of the Reapportionment Board will be
determined by the outcome of the 2010 statewide elections. Both political
parties are already looking to the 2006 election outcomes in the Governor,
Secretary of State, and Auditor contests, because whichever party wins
at least two of these three contests can expect to have incumbents seeking
re-election in 2010  and thus to have an advantage in controlling
the Reapportionment Board. At this stage, the political and partisan climate
in Ohio does not bode well for legislative redistricting reform. None
of the candidates for statewide office in 2006 have made reform a high
priority.

Any reforms to be considered in future years must of course take into
account such traditional factors as the equal population requirement,
minority voting rights, contiguity, and compactness. But ideally, competitiveness
should also be a factor in drawing a redistricting plan. It would also
be desirable to have an independent bipartisan or nonpartisan redistricting
commission that has some limited discretion to oversee the process and
insure that the selected plan is a sound one. It would also be desirable
to allow any individual or group to submit its own plan, a proposal that
the League of Women Voters has consistently supported. In general, the
process should be characterized by transparency and public participation.
This in turn would require that the State of Ohio provide the necessary
election information so that various entities  including members
of the public and nonpartisan groups  can construct their own plans.

Finally, it would be a good idea to require as a matter of law that redistricting
may occur just once a decade, after each decennial census. This would
head off the political games that we have witnessed in other states, as
political control changed hands and re-redistricting occurred
in mid-decade. At present, it appears unlikely that Congress will take
over responsibility for redistricting from the states, or take action
to forbid mid-decade redistricting. While redistricting cases will inevitably
make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is not likely that the Court
will impose limits on partisan gerrymandering any time soon. That is particularly
true after its recent decision in LULAC v. Perry, which upheld the constitutionality
of Texas 2003 re-redistricting plan.

It thus appears likely that the states will be left with responsibility
for reforming their own redistricting systems. In the ideal world, the
states would indeed be laboratories of democracy where different states
would test different solutions and one could observe what worked and did
not work in various settings. Unfortunately, Ohio does not appear poised
to participate in such experimentation. It will probably take a good deal
of public education for citizens to understand the problems in the current
system and for the political will for real redistricting reform to develop.

In addition to satisfying certain traditional reapportionment requirements
(such as contiguity, population equality, and protection of minority rights),
redistricting should take into account competitiveness. Increasing the
number of competitive districts would help mitigate the consequences of
Ohios current partisan system, including the states large
number of safe districts and increasingly polarized legislative delegations.

The power to draw Ohios legislative and congressional district boundaries
should be vested in a commission which ideally should be independent and
nonpartisan or at a minimum bipartisan. Such a commission should be granted
sufficient discretion and resources to accomplish its work while being
appropriately constrained and guided so as to produce a desirable redistricting
plan.

The public and community groups should be offered opportunities to submit
their own redistricting plans to the commission. In the interest of transparency
and encouraging citizen participation, the commission should be required
to make raw census data and related information available to individuals
and groups interested in developing their own plans.

Ohio law should specify that redistricting will be conducted once a decade
in order to avoid political games and power plays.